Bumbling may be too generous a term

So I called this blog bumbling forward...Bumbling is generally how I move forward. Tripping falling, grabbing onto stuff to try to stay up, knocking other stuff over but when it is all said and done I usually end up ahead of where I started.

Case and point: Unbeknownst to me, somewhere along the way I did something to my blogger settings that made it necessary for me to approve each comment. Gail was talking to a friend who mentioned she had commented and I was all like "no she didn't." So I started poking around and found the source of the problem. She did indeed comment as well as 18 others.

To those of you gracious enough to comment please accept my humble apologies. If nothing else Bumbling forward is always an adventure.

When everything is said and done: Too close to home

okay...so three days after I write the last post I taught during our Sunday morning gatherings. The message I prepared was about Jesus as the image of the invisible God. In order to get the best picture of God we need to enlarge our view of Jesus to include his birth, life, message, ministry, death and ressurection. The message was heavy with visuals, scripture on the screen, and a video of various artist's depictions of Jesus.

Our first service starts at 9:00 am at 8:58 am after an hour of rebooting and reconfiguring and tweaking and guessing and switching cables I was unable to get any sort of image from the computer that runs our service to the screen. As I thought back to my post and the article that motivated it, I said "okay God...if want me to do this without any of the stuff I had planned then so be it." One last ditch effort...and it worked. At 9:01 the announcement loop started running and the service started.

God's got one sick sense of humor...


technorati tags Church marketing sucks

When everything is said and done

I found this thought regarding creating church experiences on Church Marketing sucks.com.

Yet the questions remain: How much should I do? What should I avoid? What is cool? What works?

Here's a simple approach I've learned...

If the electricity went out, and your walls fell down, and your biggest givers died, what would you have left? Would you have a community of people still seeking after the heart of God? Would you still worship even without a band? Would you still be able to learn about God even though you can't show a video or a PowerPoint slide? In other words, what you have when everything else goes away is what your church is really all about.

What great questions! I'm not sure if I have great answers. These questions are great filters to evaluate what we do in the name of ministry.

Technorati Tags church church marketing sucks

tag of 4s

Erin over at Biscotti Brain Posted this nifty little tag. Here are my responses:

Four Jobs I've Had:
1: Greens Keeper
2: Bank Teller
3: Sales guy (Consumer paper: toilet paper, paper towels cups plates, etc)
4: Youth Pastor

Four Movies I Watch Over and Over Again:
1: Godfather (only part 1 or 2)
2: Braveheart

Only those 2

Four Places I've Lived:
1: Connecticut
2: Pennsylvania
3: Arkansas
4: Ohio


Four TV Shows I Watch:
1: Lost
2: Scrubs
3: Rescue Me

That's about all I have time for


Four Places I've Vacationed:
1: St Maarten
2: Finger Lakes, NY
3: White Mountains, NH
4: Cape Cod, Mass

Four Websites I visit daily:
1: woot
2: Music for Robots
3: spiritual-formation.com
4: Pandora.com

Four of My Favorite Foods:
1: Steak
2: Penne a la vodka
3: Apple Pie
4: Big D cheeseburger from Duchess

Four Places I'd like to be right now:
1: Fully Here
2: The White Mountains
3: Cape Cod
4: "Sitting on a beach earning 20%" (said in a german accent)

Slink, Greg, Tracie, Uncle Ward...if you guys haven't done this yet feel like playing?

On finding a pastoral response

There is a string of posts and responses swirling around Brian Mclaren's article in Leadership journal. The article, I believe, was meant to focus on a pastor's response, i.e. how does one respond in love and concern to a defining question, such as homosexuality. I do not believe Mclaren intended to answer the actual biblical interpretation of same sex relationships.

Mark Driscoll's response has also garnered alot of attention.

As has McLaren's reposnse to Driscoll's reposnse. Got all that?


I am fairly confident that God's plan from the begining has been for monogomous realtionships between one man and one woman.

That being said, I appreciate and resonate with Mclaren's choice of the word "agonize," in his original article. I agonize over the separation I may have just put between God and someone in a same sex relationship by the first sentence of this paragraph. I agonize over memories of conversations where I have communicated what I believe to be the truth of God's word regarding same-sex relationships and have failed to communicate the truth of God's grace for us all, straight or gay. I agonize over not knowing how to communicate disagreement with someone on something as defining as sexuality while still communicating respect, love and concern. I agonize over the occasions where I feel like I have done all I can to communicate respect, love and concern and what was perceived was none of the above.

Is it possible to disagree with someone on an issue as defining as their sexuality and still be perceived as caring and loving and interested and concerned? Must we choose between grace and truth?


Technorati Tags: brian mclaren mark driscoll